The Eleventh Hour
by CatsbytheGreat
Summary: Alternate Universe. The Tenth Doctor meets Amy Pond and her fiancee, Rory, but that isn't supposed to happen. A 'what if' of sorts.
1. The Eleventh Hour

**Author's Note: Other than the 'I don't know the characters', this is a challenge in an interesting competition between my sister and I to write a Doctor Who story. Which doesn't matter, I suppose, but if you ever wanted to know how this story came about, that's how. **

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The TARDIS doors opened and the Doctor, looking rather ragged and with a good assortment of scratches on his face, stepped out into the Chiswick street. He was closely followed by Wilfred Mott, who looked perfectly fine. The only indication that anything was amiss was the look on Wilf's face, one of deep worry.

"Well," said the Doctor, glancing around. "Here we are. Home."

Wilf turned to the Doctor. "I'll see you again, right?"

The Doctor nodded. "I think I'll be seeing you again."

Wilf hesitated, sensing the Doctor wanted him to leave but unsure of whether he wanted to go or not. Whether he should go. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Oh," the Doctor shrugged. "I'm always alright. You just go on, Wilf. Don't worry about me." He grinned. "I'm alive, after all."

"Right." Wilf nodded. "That's good, then. Well. I better see you around! None of that disappearing and never coming back."

The Doctor smiled, and if it was strained Wilf didn't comment. "Don't worry. I'll be seeing you."

Wilf nodded and walked away, back to his house. The Doctor turned and went back inside the TARDIS, closing the doors behind him.

Inside it was quiet. The silence became painfully obvious. The Doctor still didn't have a companion. Of course, he could have brought Wilf with him, but he needed a rest. He knew it. Falling from a few hundred feet through glass and landing on a marble floor had its consequences. He leaned against the center console.

He was lucky, he knew that. After the Master had revealed himself the Doctor was sure that he would die. Yet, when all was said and done he was on the floor, hurt but alive, and Wilf was rushing to him asking him if he was alright as he lay there in complete shock.

No one knocked four times.

Then a strange crackling had brought him out of his shock. The glass chamber just a few feet away had been flooded with dangerous radiation, and the Doctor and Wilf both felt extremely lucky that no one had been in there at the time.

Now, the Doctor had all the universe ahead of him. He wasn't sure how long his tenth life would last, but he had an uneasy feeling it was lasting longer than it should have.

Still, he had to go on. He decided to navigate the TARDIS into the time vortex, where he could just let it drift until he had relaxed and decided on a place to go.

That was the plan until the TARDIS jerked and threw him on the floor.

"Hey!" the Doctor yelled, but the only response was an explosion of sorts on the center console, and a few other explosive sounds. Sparks flew as the Doctor struggled to get up and fix the problem. The TARDIS jerked again, sending him flying.

"What?" He cried, and another explosion ripped through the ship. The situation reminded him of the time the TARDIS had fallen into a parallel universe by mistake, and had died as a result. He hoped this wasn't what was happening, but as the TARDIS experienced another explosion his confidence wavered.

Another period of instability threw the Doctor towards the doors, which opened and the Doctor, hanging for life on one of the railings, saw the night skyline of London.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me!" he yelled. "We are not crashing into London!"

Almost as if in response, the TARDIS dropped a few feet, bringing the open doors dangerously close to the glass surface of the Swiss Re building. Then the ship swung around, tossing the Doctor back towards the center and slamming the doors shut.

The Doctor once again attempted to try bring some control to his ship, but a strange feeling in his stomach told him that he was loosing altitude at an extremely fast rate and that if he didn't do something immediately he would-

Crash. So hard that he was thrown from the center console into another room of the TARDIS, as the ship tilted on its side, and somehow managed to find himself buried among a ton of heavy books in his library.

There was silence.

"Oh." The Doctor gingerly stood, and saw that the entrance to his library was above him. He'd have to climb, and then find some sort of way to get up to the door and out. And then find another way to straighten out his ship.

He was dead tired.

Still, he used the shelves for foothold and got himself as far as the console room, which had nothing to hold on to. He lifted the nearest grating on the floor and pulled out a rather handy gadget, a grappling hook. "I haven't had to use this in ages," he told himself.

With a snap of his fingers (he was extremely grateful that he's figured out the TARDIS would respond to finger snaps before this point) the doors opened, and he faced a clear night's sky. The Doctor threw the grappling hook so that it landed outside the TARDIS, and used the rope to climb out. He had landed on the ground and was straightening out his somewhat raggedy suit before he noticed that someone was watching him.

"Oh. Hello." The person in question was a small ginger girl, dressed in her nightgown and staring at him like he'd grown two heads.

"Hi," she said warily. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor. And I seem to have crashed in your back yard, which was a complete accident, believe me. Although it's better than crashing into London, I suppose. At least I didn't hit the house. I didn't hit it, right?"

The girl shook her head, still looking confused.

The Doctor cleared his throat. "Right. I'm talking too much. You don't want to hear that, I can tell. So. Right. Who are you?"

"My name's Amelia Pond."

"Lovely name, Amelia. I knew an Amelia once but she disappeared during a flight across the Pacific ocean. She was very nice. Shame about the disappearance. A lot of people never got over that." The Doctor took a deep breath and saw that Amelia was staring at him. "Right. Talking too much."

"Have you got a head injury or something?" Amelia asked. "You're talking about Amelia Earhart."

"Yes." The Doctor looked around and suddenly snapped his fingers. "We must be in Scotland, right? I love Scotland! You've got a Scottish accent. And it must be fairly late in the 20th century, or early in the 21st century, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm usually not."

"We're not in Scotland," Amelia told him. "My parents made me move here and it's complete rubbish."

"Oh." The Doctor was slightly disappointed. "Where is 'here'?"

"Leadworth, England."

"Oh." The Doctor sighed, feeling rather tired. A fall and then a crash. He needed sleep. Or at the very least something to eat. He eyed the house in front of him. "Where are your parents?"

"I live with my aunt," Amelia said. "She's not here right now." She frowned. "Why are you here?"

"I wish I could tell you," the Doctor said, "but as far as I know I just crashed."

"Do you think you could...?" Amelia trailed off.

The Doctor frowned. "What?" Amelia remained silent. "No, go on, tell me. You can trust me."

Amelia shrugged. "It's nothing. Just...I was wondering if you could fix the crack in my room?"

The Doctor thought it was a strange request, but he nodded. "I can." He took a deep breath. "I just need to...sit for a few minutes. And maybe have something to eat. Have you got bananas? I love a good banana."

Five minutes and a few disheveled cupboards later, the Doctor sat at Amelia Pond's kitchen table happily munching away on a banana. Amelia watched him and frowned. "You're strange,"

"Strange because I'm eating a banana?" the Doctor asked.

"No. You talk too much."

"That's not strange. Well, unless all the people you know don't talk at all. Then it's strange, but for you. Not for me."

Amelia shrugged.

The Doctor leaned forward. "Why're you so afraid of this crack, anyway?"

"I'm not," Amelia said. " I told you, it's nothing."

"I know when people are lying," the Doctor told her. "I've done a lot of it myself. You can tell me all you want that this crack is nothing but I can see the fear in your eyes. You wouldn't let a strange man who walked out of a blue box come into your house to look at nothing. So, come on." The Doctor jumped up, somewhat refreshed by his snack. "Let's go see the crack."

Amelia led him up the stairs and into one of the rooms. The Doctor looked around. It was a little girl's room, with a small bed and blue walls and a lamp lit on one of the dressers. And a crack on the wall directly facing the door.

The Doctor walked over and began to examine it, putting on his glasses. Not that he needed them, but they did tend to put him in the right frame of mind for concentration. He ran his fingers along the crack, and then took out his sonic screwdriver to scan it.

"What is it?" Amelia asked, still standing by the door.

"Well," the Doctor said, "for starters, it shouldn't be here. Amelia Pond," he fixed her with a grave stare, "you were right to call me."

"Why?" Amelia asked.

The Doctor found himself suddenly distracted, however, by a sound. He pressed his ear against the wall while asking, "Is it..._talking_?" He listened and frowned. "I hear something."

"Sometimes I hear voices through the crack," Amelia told him. "They say thing like 'silence will fall'."

The Doctor listened.

On the other side of the crack he could hear a conversation. A man, saying "You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?"

And then, to his complete shock, he heard Amelia's voice, even though Amelia was still in the room and not talking. The other Amelia said, "Yes."

The man replied, "Everything's going to be fine."

The Doctor shook his head and pulled away from the wall, unsure of how to take this. That 'yes', that was Amelia, but the man's voice was unrecognizable. He wondered why Amelia would be on the other side of the crack, especially a crack such as this.

"No," the Doctor muttered. "That's not what they're saying to me." The Doctor moved to stand next to Amelia, not taking his eyes off the crack. "That crack shouldn't be here. It shouldn't even exist. That isn't just a crack in your wall. It's much worse than that. It's the worst thing a crack can be. It's a crack in the universe. Which is fascinating, but it's also a ton of trouble. A whole universe-full of trouble."

"What?" Amelia asked, not taking her eyes off the crack as well.

"The crack represents two points in time and space that shouldn't have touched. Ever. It can't be painted over or fixed because its universal. The real question is, what caused it? Cracks like that are caused by explosions, but that had to be a huge explosion. But what exploded? I have to think!"

"How're you gonna find out what caused it?" Amelia asked.

"Easy," the Doctor told her. "I'll open it."

"What!"

"Don't worry," the Doctor said, fiddling with the settings on his sonic screwdriver. "Everything will be fine." The moment the words left his mouth he had a terrible feeling of foreboding. Hadn't he just heard those words from the other side of the crack?

Amelia fixed him with a suspicious look. "Are you lying to me?"

The Doctor nodded. "But isn't that exciting, not knowing what's going to happen?" One look at her face told him that it probably wasn't that exciting, for her. Still, he had to appear calm. He raised the sonic screwdriver and pressed down, pointing at the crack.

For a moment nothing happened, and the Doctor wondered whether he had misjudged the importance of the crack. And then it started to open, a bright light filling the gap between the two walls. A strange rushing sound filled the air and the Doctor felt, more than he'd ever felt before, that time was wrong.

As a Time Lord, the Doctor always had a sense of time, of its fixed points and places where it was in flu and could be rewritten. He could tell when seconds and minutes and hours were passing more accurately than the world's best watch.

But this was nothing like anything he had ever experienced.

The time suddenly felt so wrong that it was painful, and caused him to fall. He'd never felt such displacement in the universe before. Amelia yelled something but he couldn't hear her. The sonic screwdriver lay abandoned on the floor, and the crack began to close, but not before something bright and smoking flew out of it and landed in the Doctor's lap.

The Doctor stared at the object before picking it up in his hands and turning it over. His stomach jumped into his throat.

It was a charred piece of the TARDIS.

"No," he whispered, turning the piece over and over in his hands. "No, no, no, no."

"Doctor!"

The Doctor's head snapped up. Amelia was staring at him. Beyond her, the crack on the wall had closed. He looked from her to the piece of TARDIS in his hands and pocketed it. "Sorry about that," he told her. "Just...was a bit shocked. And tired. That's all."

"What was in your hands?" Amelia asked, still unconvinced that everything was fine.

"Nothing," the Doctor said. "Just shrapnel from an explosion. Now-"

He was cut off by the sound of a deep bell.

"What was that?" Amelia asked.

"The cloister bell!" the Doctor jumped up. "My ship, it has this bell and it rings when something's wrong. I need to get back!" He ran out of the room and Amelia followed as fast as her short legs could carry her.

By the time Amelia made it outside the Doctor already had reached his ship. She skidded to a halt just beside him. "What now?"

"My ship's tired of being crashed," the Doctor said. "She wants to be tested out to see if she works. And there's a terrible danger, hence the cloister bell. I've got to go."

"Don't."

Both the Doctor and Amelia looked at each other, slightly shocked by her sudden request.

"I'll be back in five minutes," the Doctor told her. "I just have to do this really quick test and perhaps figure out the danger but then I'll be back. I promise."

"People say that all the time," Amelia protested.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "I'm not people," he said. "I'm the Doctor. You can trust me."

"Wait," Amelia started, but the Doctor didn't have time. He merely repeated "Five minutes" and jumped back into his ship.

Amelia watched in awe as the blue box dematerialized. Then she ran back inside to pack her clothes into a small suitcase, before coming out to wait.

Five minutes later nothing happened.

Amelia Pond waited for a long time.


	2. Five Minutes

**Author's Note: I'd just like to let everyone reading this know that the story itself is actually finished. I'm going to space the postings for both editorial reasons and because it's more fun that way, but rest assured, it's done. Enjoy!  
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Amy Pond sat in her room, dressed in a rather skimpy police woman's outfit. Directly across from her bed, hanging in her closet, loomed a wedding dress.

Tomorrow Amy Pond would get married.

That was unbelievable. There was a time when Amy never thought about getting married, and especially not to the man she planned on marrying. Rory Williams. She met him shortly after she moved to Leadworth, and he was one of the few people who accepted her and her strange stories about the mysterious man who opened a crack in her bedroom one night and who called himself the Doctor.

Rory had made a good friend, always willing to play dress-up as the Doctor whenever Amy wanted him to, until they both grew too old to play dress-up games without questions being asked. Then Amy would sometimes simply sit with Rory and talk about the Doctor and wonder where he had gone and why he hadn't come back.

Rory would listen, and no matter how unbelievable Amy's stories seemed (a crack in her wall that opened and a man who traveled by disappearing police call box were pretty unbelievable) he believed her. But he also was a sensible person, and after awhile he told Amy that perhaps her Doctor wasn't coming back. Amy pretended to agree, but secretly she never stopped waiting.

Either because he really wanted to or because he wanted to please Amy (she could never tell) Rory went to medical school and became a nurse.

And then there was the dating. One day Rory was just some guy, her friend. And the next he was somewhat attractive. They dated each other and eventually, years down the line, Rory asked her The Question. Awkward as ever, on a date in a restaurant, Rory took out the ring. Amy, who had never really had a real relationship with anyone else, said yes without really thinking.

The wedding dress was there and Amy wasn't sure whether she really wanted to wear it and become a wife. Have children. Live in a house with a real job (because having children and being a kissogram at the same time wasn't an option) with real responsibilities. She was terrified. It scared her even more than that crack in her wall that plagued her as a child.

For a moment Amy considered trying on the dress. She'd only worn it once, while getting it measured and adjusted, and she wondered whether wearing it the evening before her wedding would feel any different.

A strange sound took Amy out of her thoughts. It sounded like some sort of groaning, strangely familiar and yet distant at the same time. Her heart thudding (for reasons she couldn't quite explain), she rushed to the window.

A blue police call box had parked itself in her back yard.

Amy pushed herself away from the window in shock. She glanced at the wedding dress and then back outside. And then made herself sit on the bed.

"This can't be real," she muttered, but the words had barely gotten out when the sound of a door opening echoed through the house. Amy stood up, unsure of what to do or where to go.

Before she could form any real plan, the person who had entered the house began climbing the stairs. Amy knew it was the Doctor—who else would arrive in that blue box? She didn't know how she should react to him. It had been fourteen years.

She realized she was quite angry. He'd said five minutes. Fourteen years was a bit late.

Then she heard his voice, just as she remembered it, calling her name. "Amelia?"

Amy hadn't been called that in ages. She certainly wasn't that little girl anymore. She stepped out into the hallway and found herself staring at the Doctor.

The Doctor looked confused and a bit worried. He hadn't aged, and Amy saw that his suit was exactly the same one as he had worn the night they met, striped and quite ragged. She also saw that his face still had those same cuts on them, and this confused her. Fourteen years and he hadn't changed at all.

Before she could say anything, he began talking. "Excuse me," he said, "I just want to know—is Amelia Pond here? I told her I'd be back in five minutes but my ship made a bit of a mistake and it seems to be morning, but I'm not exactly sure. Do you know where she is?"

"Amelia Pond doesn't live here anymore," Amy responded, folding her arms. "She hasn't lived here for six months." She waited for the Doctor's reaction.

The Doctor looked extremely upset. "But I promised her, five minutes. Six months? It can't have been...that's really...I need to find her. Can you tell me where she is?"

Amy decided to let him go on thinking he'd been six months late. Punish him a bit for all the waiting he'd made her do. She took a step forward, feeling rather brave. "I'm sorry, sir. I can't help you. I can tell you, however, that what you're doing is illegal."

The Doctor frowned. "What?"

"You're breaking and entering on private property," Amy explained, trying to sound official. "I'm going to have to take you to the station."

"What?" the Doctor repeated.

"I work with the Leadworth Police Force," Amy explained, while trying to not think about all the times she'd never seen the police. "Breaking and entering is a crime."

The Doctor swept his sharp gaze over Amy, and she felt uncomfortable.

"You're not a police woman," the Doctor stated after a moment of silence.

Amy hadn't expected or wanted him to say that. "What?"

"You're not a real police woman," the Doctor repeated. "For starters, your skirt is far too short and police women in this time period wear trousers. Second, I can spot a fake authoritative badge from miles away. C, or third, the gun in your holster is also fake. Plastic, in fact. So tell me, who are you really?"

Amy stared at him, wide-eyed. She had forgotten the single important fact that the Doctor, as she had known him, was clever. Frustrated, and a little bit shocked, she pushed past him and ran down the stairs.

"Wait!" She could hear him following her, even as she ran outside and into the street.

"Don't talk to me!" she yelled, even as she hoped he would figure it out.

"Hold on!" the Doctor caught up to her and ran in front of her, blocking her way. He squinted at her and then his eyes widened in shock. "I'm so _thick_!" he snapped. "I can't believe I didn't spot it sooner! You—you're Amelia Pond! Same eyes, same red hair, same accent! But—it's been more than six months, hasn't it? You're older."

Amy glared at him. "Try fourteen years!" she snapped.

The Doctor took a step backwards. "Fourteen years?" he repeated. "I thought the TARDIS was having some trouble but I didn't think it was that bad. Fourteen years? That has to be some sort of record for my ship. She's usually very accurate. Somewhat. Most of the time." He paused and then frowned at her. "Why'd you say six months?"

"Why," Amy asked, all the fury of the past fourteen years buried in the words, "did you say five minutes?"

The Doctor sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I never meant to do this to you. I thought I would be five minutes, but something went wrong. But...surely you've had a good life? Met some nice people, made some accomplishments, that kind of thing. I never asked why you were dressed as a police woman in the first place. Some kind of costume? Is it Halloween?"

Amy's anger spiked. She wasn't going to let the Doctor use light-hearted talk to distract her. "I'm a kissogram," she said shortly.

The Doctor stared at her. "A...what?"

"Yeah. I go around and kiss people, in costume. And get paid for it." Amy gave him a look daring him to comment.

"Okay," the Doctor sighed, "so it seems your life didn't turn out...normal."

"You put me through four psychiatrists," Amy added.

The Doctor had the grace to look guilty. "Four?"

"They all told me you weren't real."

This brought a smile to the Doctor's face. "I'm not sure whether to be disturbed or flattered. At least you remembered me."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Shut up."

"So..." the Doctor looked around. The village of Leadworth was painfully quiet. It seemed they both noticed that they'd been standing in the street for a good ten minutes and not a car had come by.

"It's quiet," Amy stated. "This is the place you left me for fourteen years. Waiting."

"Left you?" the Doctor echoed. "I don't understand."

"Let me explain," Amy said, grabbing him by the tie and pulling him close. "You were going to bring me with you. That's why you said you'd be back in five minutes, because you knew I wanted to go." When the Doctor remained silent Amy began to feel that anxious feeling she got when it began to occur to her that she might be wrong. "Isn't...that why you were coming back?"

"I"m not sure," the Doctor admitted, releasing his tie from her grip and stepping back. "The thing is, I haven't travelled with people in a long time. I'm not sure if I want to do this. No—that's wrong. I think I do. Well, I should. It isn't that. It's...Oh, I'm out of practice. I've forgotten."

"First you ask me," Amy suggested.

"Well, yes. That would be the obvious thing to do." The Doctor cleared his throat. "So...Amelia Pond-"

"Amy."

"Sorry, _Amy_, do you want to come travel with me?"

Amy nodded. "Sure. Although I'm not sure how we're going to travel. I mean, I saw you disappear in that box but...it's a box."

"It's bigger on the inside," the Doctor said with a grin, which didn't explain much.

"Right."

"Amy!" The Doctor and Amy turned around upon hearing this new voice, and Amy saw that her fiancee, Rory, was walking down the street.

"Who's that?" the Doctor asked.

"Rory," Amy said. When the Doctor raised an eyebrow at her she added, "Right. He's, ah, my...fiancee."

The Doctor smiled. "That's lovely. Maybe he'd fancy a trip?"

"I'm not sure..."

By this time Rory had reached them. He gave Amy a quick kiss on the cheek and then turned towards the Doctor. "I don't believe we've met," he said, sticking out his hand. "I'm Rory Williams, Amy's fiancee. And you...look familiar, but I can't place you."

The Doctor took Rory's hand and shook it, before saying, "I'm the Doctor."

Rory's eyes widened in recognition, while Amy turned away in slight embarrassment. "You—you're the Doctor. The real Doctor!" The Doctor nodded, looking rather bemused. "Oh—Amy, this is the Doctor! The Raggedy Doctor! The one you made me dress up—-"

"That's enough," Amy cut across him, ignoring a stifled laugh from the Doctor in question. "The Doctor's got a gift for us. Isn't that right, Doctor?"

"Ah, yes," the Doctor said. "You can both travel with me. If you want. _One_ trip," he added. "Just one."

"I'd love to," Rory said. "It sounds nice, it really does, but I don't know you. Not to mention, and I'm sure Amy must have mentioned it, but we're getting married tomorrow."

"Are you really?" the Doctor said with much enthusiasm. "That's great. Although I should mention that if Amy really wants the trip, and," the Doctor shot her a curious look, "I think she really does, I can travel in time."

The words took a few minutes to sink in. Amy found that they explained a lot, both in terms of the Doctor's confusion about her as well as his appearance.

"That's not possible," Rory said after a few moments.

"Well." The Doctor shrugged. "You can determine that for yourself."

Rory gave Amy a look, but Amy grabbed his arm playfully. "Oh, come _on_, Rory! Time travel! How many couples get to do that before their wedding!" Rory looked unconvinced, so Amy added, "Please? It would make me the happiest person on earth. You know how long I've been waiting!"

Torn between the somewhat ridiculous prospect of going off with a stranger who claimed to travel in time and the possibility of making his future wife the happiest person on earth, Rory stood for a good minute or two having some sort of internal debate. Amy waited, almost unable to stand still, wondering what she'd do should Rory refuse.

Rory sighed. "Fine. One trip. And we have to be back by tomorrow. Can you do that, Doctor?"

"Course I can!" the Doctor said.

"See? He can," Amy said, grinning. She felt free. Tomorrow was still tomorrow, but now she was going on an adventure. "Isn't that great?"

"Only if he's not fourteen years late. Again," Rory muttered.

"I won't be!" the Doctor said. "I promise. Well, mostly. Hopefully." He frowned, but then shook himself out of his thought process. "Come on! I'll show you my ship, and then we'll decide where to go. And when I say 'where to go' I also mean 'when to go', and you have some pretty good selections."

Quite satisfied with the way things were working out, despite a fourteen year wait, Amy followed the Doctor to his ship, with Rory somewhat doubtfully bringing up the rear of their small group.


	3. Time and Relative Dimensions In Space

**Author's Note: A bit of a shorter chapter. Enjoy!**

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Rory and Amy were expecting the interior of the Doctor's mysterious blue police call box to be rather too tight to fit three people.

The Doctor expected their surprised reactions when they found it to be much bigger on the inside, complete with a console room and corridors leading off to numerous other places.

Amy was appropriately wide-eyed and full of awe as she walked around, gaping at the sheer hugeness of the TARDIS. Rory took one rather skeptical look around before fixing his gaze on the Doctor. "It's bigger on the inside," he stated.

The Doctor leaned against the center console. "Yep."

"But...that's impossible."

"Rory," the Doctor said, "you'll soon find that there is nothing impossible on this ship. Trust me. Now, let me do some explaining."

"Yes, _please_," Rory muttered.

"This," the Doctor gestured vaguely around the area, "is my ship. It's called the TARDIS, which stands for Time and Relative Dimensions In Space. It does exactly what it says: travels in time and space. Yes, Rory, that means I'm a time traveler. Don't look so shocked. So, you know what that means, right?"

"You could take us back in time to when we were younger," Amy said, looking rather excited by the idea. "Wouldn't that be amazing?"

"_Well_," the Doctor replied, "not exactly. I can't take you back in your own time-line for safety reasons. What I meant to say was that this ship can take you anywhere, anywhen in the universe. You name it. World War I, the Medusa Cascade, end of the universe, the big bang, places you've never even heard of!"

"Are you an alien or something?" Amy cut in.

The Doctor grinned. "Yes."

"You're...an alien," Rory echoed.

"Too much for you to handle at once?" the Doctor asked. Rory didn't reply. The Doctor shrugged. "I get that a lot. The whole alien thing and a ship that's bigger on the inside doesn't sit well with a lot of people. Anyway...the real matter at hand is something entirely different. I will take you places, I promise, and we will get back by tomorrow. Hopefully. Past mistakes in time travel aside. The real issue is that time is currently wrong, and it has something to do with the crack in Amy's bedroom."

Amy and Rory glanced rather knowingly at each other.

"You mean," Amy said, "it's still a problem? I thought you fixed it."

"The crack story was real?" Rory added. "All of it? Even the part about it opening up?"

"Rory," the Doctor cried, looking slightly offended, "I thought you were smarter than this! You're telling me that you've met me and seen the TARDIS and you still don't believe that Amy's stories—whatever she told you—are real?"

"I don't know," Rory snapped. "This is a bit much to handle. I mean, this whole thing's ridiculous! And it's the night before the wedding. Amy—we shouldn't even be here."

"Oh, come on," Amy pleaded, touching Rory on the arm. "You know we'll never have another experience like this. Don't you want to have an adventure?"

Rory's expression softened but he still hesitated when replying. "It's just that...we've been waiting so long and...I don't want anything to go wrong."

"It won't," Amy insisted. "Just go along for the ride. You can trust me."

The Doctor watched this all happening with mixed feelings of amusement and apprehension. Of course he could promise an adventure, but given his track record with recent companions—a memory of erasing Donna's memories sprung to mind—he wasn't so sure he could promise a safe return.

Yet Amy and Rory's antics as a couple reminded him of that humanity he missed having on the TARDIS. Here were two humans about to live their lives, get married, something he would never do. There was Amy, wanting to hold it off, and Rory, wanting to get it over with.

And both depending on the Doctor to give them something satisfactory. But what, he couldn't imagine.

All he could do was fix the problem at hand. Which, now that he thought about it, really needed fixing.

"Sorry to interrupt," he broke in, and Amy and Rory turned to him in slight surprise, "but there is that whole issue about time being wrong, and I'd really like to figure out how to fix it. Which may lead us to some very interesting places. But if it doesn't, then I'll let you both choose the next destination and we'll have a nice little trip before your wedding. Like a honeymoon but not really because you're not married yet. Fine?"

Rory shrugged, and Amy replied with all the enthusiasm in the world, "Of course!"

The Doctor turned to the console, ready to start his investigations. "Allons-y!"

Amy seemed to be content just to hear that odd groaning sound the TARDIS made while in motion and was convinced, even though she couldn't see it, that they were traveling through the time (and space) vortex.

Rory wanted visual evidence.

The Doctor decided to sacrifice Rory's happiness in order to make some calculations, a process that wasn't going particularly well. He needed to track down where else this crack appeared in the universe, and he knew it would be elsewhere, because a crack in the universe appeared in multiple places. Not just a little girl's bedroom. He needed to see how the crack disturbed time and go on from there.

Of course, he could have used the crack in Amy's room. The problem with that (other than that Amy would have been extremely disappointed by such a trip) was that he didn't know how time was wrong. Only that it was. Likely it was because the events included him, and despite knowing the history and future of practically every corner of the universe (unless he'd forgotten it or the history itself somehow changed), he couldn't tell his own personal future.

Which made his task somewhat more difficult, but also more exciting. The Doctor planned on finding a crack in time in a well-known part of history in order to determine just how wrong the crack was making time. Then he could gauge the seriousness of everything and possibly determine why his own time felt so wrong. And then, maybe after that, and after the trip Amy Pond was sure to request if their destination turned out boring, he could get a rest.

Being a Time Lord, he healed faster than most other species. But still, despite his injuries not being so injuring anymore he was still tired.

A new bit of writing popped up on the TARDIS view screen.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Oh," he commented.

Amy and Rory, who had been watching his impressive performance operating the TARDIS (it could only be called that, the way the Doctor used two hands and a foot to operate a machine meant to be piloted by six people) came up behind him.

"What's that mean?" Rory asked, being the first to notice that the writing on the screen was not in English, or any language he was aware of, and did not in fact make sense.

"It means I've found your destination. Fortunately for you, it's completely new. Unfortunately for me," the Doctor sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "I've been here before. Still here, actually. So we've got to be careful."

Rory turned to Amy. "Did you actually understand that?"

But Amy was more focused on the journey ahead. "Where are we going?"

The Doctor swept past them and ended up standing in front of the doors.

"How does London on Christmas Eve in 1851 sound?"


	4. The Next Doctor

**Author's Note: I feel a bit cruel with Rory's clothing selection. Even crueler that I'm leaving it up to your interpretation. Just think he's dressing like Jackson Lake. Enjoy!**

**

* * *

**

"You're telling me," Rory said, "that outside that door we're hundreds of years in the past, in London. And it's Christmas."

"Yep." The Doctor snapped his fingers and the doors swung open with a creaking sound.

Amy made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a squeal. "So we've traveled in time and space?"

"Yep." The Doctor gestured towards the outside with his arm. "Come on!"

Rory and Amy made their way outside, where they met snow and a brick wall and realized, perhaps a bit late, that both were wearing outfits that were rather inappropriate for the cold weather. And the time period.

"It's a bit chilly," Rory commented.

The Doctor looked confused for a moment and then seemed to realize what Rory was talking about. He snapped into action. "Right. Yes. Sorry. If you go back inside and through the doorway towards the back you'll be taken to a room with lots of clothes in it. You can change and then we'll be off."

"I'm sorry—did you say 'be taken to a room'?"

"The TARDIS is telepathic," the Doctor explained. "Complicated, I know, but essentially it'll get inside your head and lead you."

Unsure of how to respond, Rory went inside.

Amy grinned at the Doctor. "So this is it. Traveling through time and space."

The Doctor nodded. Amy ran back inside the TARDIS, leaving him alone.

The Doctor sighed and leaned against the brick wall. He remembered this trip, back when he'd been reasonably happy. Well, happy wasn't quite the word for it, but he'd been content with his companionless life. There was no one to worry about. He'd actually been able to deal with his guilt over Donna for a bit.

And now time was wrong.

He thought back to that woman and her prophecy. "He will knock four times." The Doctor wasn't one to believe in prophecies, but even the Ood had told him he would die and something about those words felt so right.

And now everything felt wrong and it made him anxious, made him want to run and run and scratch his eyes out and disappear. He didn't even want to think about why everything felt wrong. He hoped, by finding out what the crack was, he could solve it.

He didn't want to worry Amy and Rory with all this. New travelers wouldn't take well to his being so on edge, especially when their lives depended on him.

Just when he began to wonder why he'd taken the two of them along at all, Amy and Rory appeared dressed warmly, and Rory in such period appropriate clothing that the Doctor laughed.

"What?" Rory asked. "Listen, Amy said we'd be fine wearing modern winter clothing but wouldn't that mess with the timelines and stuff? And I thought it would be a better idea to wear this. Unless we're not really in the year 1851, in which case..."

"He's wearing stockings under those pants," Amy laughed.

"Don't worry," the Doctor said with a grin, "we're in 1851. Though you didn't need to dress like it. Now," he added before Rory could reply, "There's a few ground rules I need to establish. This is a place I've been before, so there's another version of me running around. But I can't see myself because that would mess with the timeline too much. We're looking for a crack, like the one in Amy's room. You two can't go anywhere without me, and if I tell you to go back to the TARDIS you go without question. Got it?"

"Yes," Rory replied.

The Doctor turned to Amy. "Amelia?"

Amy wasn't looking at him, but rather staring at a point somewhere over his shoulder. "You were looking for a crack," she said.

The Doctor frowned. "Yes."

"Well," Amy gesture to the wall behind the Doctor and his TARDIS, "there's one."

The Doctor and Rory both turned around, and sure enough, there was a crack. It was full of light, half-open it seemed.

"Stay back," the Doctor commanded, unable to tear his gaze away.

"It followed us!" Rory stammered, clearly shocked as well. "How could it do that, Doctor? Why would it turn up here as well?"

"I don't know," the Doctor admitted, "I really don't and I wish I did because I usually know these things. And this crack will be the death of me if I can't figure it out! Think!" He turned to Amy. "It hasn't given you any trouble since I left, has it?"

"Ah..." Amy hesitated, looking a bit scared and lost. "I-I'm not sure."

The Doctor took her by the shoulders and pulled her close. "I need you to think, Amy," he told her, "because this is really, really important. Has anything happened in the past few years? Anything strange? Anything different? Anything at all?" When Amy didn't respond he urged her, "Come on! Think!"

"I have dreams!" Amy cried.

The Doctor let her go. "Dreams? What kind of dreams?"

"I don't know, dreams," Amy snapped, taking a defensive step back. "I...They were about you...but you weren't you."

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "What do you me, I wasn't me?"

"I mean that I called you the Doctor and you were here and we talked but you looked different and acted different so it wasn't really you."

"Like the voice," the Doctor murmured, his eyes clouding over.

"What voice?" Amy asked.

"The voices I heard through the crack in your wall, and one was yours and the other was saying the same thing that I was but it wasn't me. Oh...Amy Pond. We have to...we have to..." He glanced back at the crack and then at his new companions. "We have to run!"

"Run?" Rory echoed.

"Yeah, run." the Doctor grabbed Amy's hand and dragged her down the alleyway with Rory bringing up the rear. They emerged a few seconds later in an open air market place of sorts, buzzing with people.

The Doctor turned and turned, looking for something, while Amy and Rory stared around in awe.

"So..." Rory sighed. "We really are in 1851 London during Christmas."

"I told you!" Amy said, grinning wildly, all concerns about the crack forgotten.

The Doctor hadn't forgotten, though. He made a noise of frustration and turned towards his two companions. "Have you seen me?"

"What?" Amy asked.

"In this crowd," the Doctor clarified. "I'm looking for myself. Well, I did move on from here, so I suppose, with a bit of looking, I could find myself at Jackson Lake's house. Mind, I can't see myself. So we'll have to be very, very, very careful. Follow me."

The Doctor lead them through a variety of streets, keeping to the corners and the shadows, until he came to a very ordinary looking house on an ordinary London street.

Crouched behind another building, the Doctor turned to Rory and Amy. "I need you to do me a favor, either one of you," he said. "See that building?" He pointed, and they nodded. "I need one of you to go and knock on the door and ask for a Jackson Lake."

"And when Mr. Lake asks why," Amy said, "what do I tell him?"

"Hold on," Rory interrupted, "you can't go. It might be dangerous."

"Come off it!" Amy said, rolling her eyes. "It's just knocking on some man's door. How dangerous could it be?"

"Well, he could be a murderer," Rory said, with less confidence than he needed, "for one thing. You never know."

"The Doctor knows who he is."

"To be fair," the Doctor interjected, "Rory has a point. Last time I was here the house got attacked by a Cyberman. Now, you don't know what they are, but it's safe to say that perhaps you should both go. I would go myself but the risk of myself answering the door is too great."

"Right," said Rory, glaring at the Doctor. "So you're just going to have two defenseless people do it for you."

Amy grabbed Rory's arm and dragged him to standing position. "Come on, Rory! It'll take five minutes!"

"And I'll be right here," the Doctor added.

Rory made a noise of disapproval but allowed himself to be dragged by Amy towards the house.

The Doctor watched.

Amy knocked on the door a few times before it opened, revealing Jackson Lake as the Doctor remembered him, tall and rather impressive for an ordinary man.

Except in his arms was a young blond boy. His son. Who should have been kidnapped.

The Doctor stood and walked over.

"I...just need to know...if you needed any...er...wood," Amy attempted to improvise. "You know, 'cause it's cold and...Christmas."

Jackson Lake looked confused as he replied, "I made sure to get everything we needed this Christmas beforehand, you can be assured of that."

"Right," Amy said.

The Doctor came up behind her and decided to intervene. "I'm sorry, but Mr. Lake, it is Christmas Day 1851, is it not?"

"Yes," Lake replied, now looking suspicious.

The Doctor evaluated Lake from top to bottom, eyes resting on his son. "This is wrong," he muttered. Then, louder, "So you haven't experienced anything strange in the past few days? Today, even? Especially?"

"No."

"Have you ever heard of anyone called the Doctor?"

"No."

The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "Not even once?" A pause. "Do you call yourself the Doctor?"

"Are you playing some sort of trick on me?" Lake asked. "I'm sorry, but I cannot help you. I just want to have a nice Christmas dinner with my family."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "It was nothing. I'm confused, I can see that now. Have a nice Christmas."

"Thank you." Lake gave the three people on his doorstep one last long look before going back inside and shutting the door behind him.

Rory rounded on the Doctor. "What was that all about?"

The look on the Doctor's face was grave. "That was an event in time, erased. No Cybermen on Christmas in 1851 London, no me showing up to save the day. No Jackson Lake losing his wife and son and thinking he's me. Which should all be good, except it's not. It's the worst thing in the universe."

Amy ventured to ask, "Why?"

The Doctor shook his head. "This crack is erasing time and rewriting it. And I'm sorry, Amy, I really am, but I think it could erase you both as well."


	5. Tracking the Crack

As soon as they reentered the TARDIS Amy turned back to the Doctor in shock. "What do you mean, erase us from time?"

The Doctor stared at Amy and Rory for a long time, considering his options. The silence lasted long enough to become disconcerting, and just as Amy got the urge to speak, the Doctor seemed to snap out of his trance. He bounded up the ramp to the center console and started flipping switches.

"Well?" Rory prompted when no answer to Amy's question came.

"Well," the Doctor responded, still handling several aspects of the TARDIS controls with a sense of urgency, "I thought that time itself was just wrong and that's what I felt in Amy's room when I opened the crack. But I was wrong. It's not just time and events. It's all of us, at once. Well, I'm just plain wrong, and you and Amy are more than that. You're both right and wrong."

"What does that mean?" Amy asked, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

"It means that time is in flux around you both," the Doctor said. "You could either exist or not exist, all throughout history. I don't know why, other than that the crack has something to do with it."

"So we might not exist?" Rory concluded.

"No." The Doctor turned to both of them. "You do exist. Right now, I'm talking to you. It's just that your existence doesn't need to be here. Which sounds terrible, I know, and I know that it's important to you both that you continue to exist, and frankly, I've never seen two people who could not exist more than you two can. Which leads me to believe the crack is to blame, because without the crack surely your existence would be more fixed."

The information took awhile to sink in.

"So," Amy said, "this crack is messing with our lives, too. Not just what happens to us."

"Right."

"Then why did you say that you're completely wrong?"

"Look at this," the Doctor said, turning the TARDIS view screen so that they could see it.

Amy was about to comment on the lack of an answer to her question when she saw the now sickeningly familiar crack on the side of what looked like a floating city.

"What's that?" Rory asked. "And why's it got a British flag on the side?"

"I've been having the TARDIS track down areas in time and space with disturbances similar to the one in Amy's room and the one we found in 1851. It worked. This," the Doctor explained, "is Starship U.K., extremely far into your future. Earth was being destroyed by, well, old age and everyone needed a way out. So here it is. Eventually they'd settle on a different planet and rename it New Earth. But this is the sort of in-between stages."

"And are we going there?" Rory asked.

"Ordinarily I would," the Doctor said, with no small amount of regret in his voice, "but I don't want to risk it with the crack already there."

"It's like it's following us around," Rory commented, staring at the screen as though it were a great danger.

"No," the Doctor corrected him, "we're following it around. At least for now." He resumed fiddling with the controls of the TARDIS and the screen went blank as they navigated away from the area.

"So now what?" Amy asked. "Where are we going?"

"There's a positively _huge_ disturbance that the TARDIS is picking up on," the Doctor told them, "and it's more than just the crack. I'm going to track it down and we're going to do some exploring."

"So that means more danger," Rory said.

The Doctor, almost as if to fuel Rory's fears, flashed a manic grin. "Oh _yes_!"

The TARDIS landed on another planet, sometime in the future if the Doctor's sense of time was anything to go by.

The Doctor briefly warned Amy and Rory that they'd have to listen to him, or else terrible things could happen. Amy barely contained her excitement at being on a different planet, while Rory tried (and failed) to contain his ever growing fear that all this running around the universe looking for a crack in time could end up nowhere good.

Secretly, the Doctor sympathized with Rory, but he would never admit that. He had to know what he was doing, and he had to stay calm, for all their sakes.

Composure fully in place, the Doctor swung open the TARDIS doors.

And found himself face-to-face with River Song.

He only managed to exclaim "River!" before his instincts took over and he (involuntarily, he would say) slammed the door and turned round to face his companions.

Both of whom looked unforgivably skeptical.

"Who was that?" Amy asked, a rather teasing smile emerging on her face.

"Someone I'm not suppose to meet at the moment," the Doctor said. "We have to go.

He moved to make his way up the ramp but Amy blocked him. "You promised me we'd see a different planet," she said.

"This is more important than a different planet!"

Amy simply stood her ground, folding her arms and fixing him with an unconvinced look, while Rory stood around looking the picture of the fine line between anxiety and relief.

The Doctor sighed in frustration. "You humans are always so stubborn!" he cried. "Never listen, never take no for an answer! Do you want to know why we can't go out there?"

"An explanation would be nice," Amy said.

"Fine. You want an explanation? Fine." The Doctor glared at her. "When I told you that I'm wrong it means that I'm not supposed to exist right now and that woman-" he pointed forcefully towards the door "-is proof. She never meets me when I look like this until later, and that happened already, and I know she can't possibly be meeting me now because she told me herself that she never met me this young. That's time rewritten within our own timelines which means that time is more wrong than I thought. And it also means that this version of me was supposed to die some time ago."

Shocked, both by the Doctor's sudden anger and his explanation, both Amy and Rory struggled to find a response. The Doctor wouldn't let them. He turned abruptly on his heel and with the clipped words "Might as well try and fix it. Can't get worse," opened the door.

The woman named River Song stood there, dressed in what looked like military uniform, smiling. "I don't know what I ever did to you, Doctor, to deserve such a rude greeting," River said, "but now that you've finally regained your manners there's something you're needed for."

The Doctor felt time twist like a knife in his gut. He gritted his teeth and ignored it. "And hello," he said. "What have you got to show me?"

"I see you have new companions," River said, looking them up and down. "And one of them has an odd sense of style." This was directed towards Rory.

"Yes, River, meet Amy and Rory," the Doctor gestured to each in turn impatiently. "Amy and Rory, meet River Song. Now, River, what have you got to show me?"

River smirked before turning and walking away. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory followed. They walked across the rather stone-like surface of the planet, found they were on a beach and then found that River was leading them towards what looked like ruins with a huge modern spacecraft crashed on top.

A bunch of men in similar army wear had set up camp, it seemed, near the ruins and the Doctor couldn't help but notice that the crashed ship burned ominously and River didn't seem at all affected by it.

"That your ship?" he asked.

"No," River replied. "We all got here by teleport. Everyone on that ship died. I was there as well investigating a threat, but luckily I managed to use my teleportation device to end up here just before the crash."

"You knew it would crash here?"

River nodded in response.

"Wait—hold on. What threat?"

River smiled. "Have you ever heard of the Weeping Angels, Doctor?"

The Doctor's eyes widened and a great amount of anxiety shot through him. A crack in the universe and Weeping Angels? "We've met," he told her. "Believe me, I know them rather well. Which is why you and your men need to get out of here, and Amy and Rory," here he addressed his companions for the first time since exiting the ship, "you need to get back in the TARDIS."

"So you can deal with this by yourself?" River laughed. "Not a chance. We were getting rid of the Angel whether or not you showed up."

"And I'm not leaving, either," Amy added (ignoring Rory's whispered "We're not?"). "I didn't come with you to be trapped in a little box."

The Doctor shook his head. "That thing, in that ship, is one of the most dangerous things in the world." Amy shrugged. "It's not going to be safe and I don't want to lose you."

"Then you'll just have to be responsible," Amy said.

The Doctor muttered, "That's just it, I don't want to," but saw that Amy would never agree with him. He wondered why he always managed to choose stubborn companions and shook the thought away. Instead, he turned to River. "What is that ship, anyway?"

"It's called the Byzantium."

The Doctor suddenly recalled a conversation in a library, and an older River Song asking him, "Have we done the crash of the Byzantium yet?"

_Not like this_, he thought as River led him towards the other men.


	6. Weeping Angel

The soldiers River Song introduced the Doctor and his two companions to were actually not soldiers, but rather clerics with guns. They were led by a man called Father Octavian.

The Doctor distinctly remembered a phrase Rose, possessed by someone else at the time, had used on New Earth. "Nuns with guns," she'd said. Not exactly nuns, but they certainly had guns.

"Hold on," Rory murmured as the clerics and River led them towards a cluster of tents and what looked like portable cabins, "these are priests? With guns?"

"We're in the future," the Doctor said with a shrug. "A lot of religions become militant. They're just adapting to a more violent world."

"But," Rory continued, "I just don't see why...they'd need those things."

The Doctor allowed himself a small grin of appreciation. "Neither do I, Rory. Which is why I don't carry a gun. Completely unnecessary."

"And dangerous."

"Pretty boy!" River called out from where she stood.

The Doctor rolled his eyes and Amy burst out laughing. "Pretty boy?" she repeated. The incredulity in her voice couldn't be more pronounced.

The Doctor offered her a charming smile. "I am, aren't I?"

Amy rolled her eyes back and the Doctor turned to River. "Yes?"

"Look at this." River held out a small, leather-bound book, which the Doctor received with great fascination. He put on his glasses and began turning pages as River explained, "We found this. It was written by a man who went mad, but it contains a lot of information about the Weeping Angels and the civilization itself."

One sentence in particular caught the Doctor's eye. "'Whatever takes the image of a Weeping Angel becomes a Weeping Angel,'" he read aloud. "That sounds rather important."

"There's more." River guided him towards one of the cabins, and this time Amy and Rory followed. Inside there was nothing except for a few monitors and a view screen.

The Weeping Angel stood with its back turned to them, face hidden beneath stone hands. The picture was a bit grainy, but the Doctor knew that the figure on screen was definitely a Weeping Angel. They were in trouble.

"If that Angel feeds off the radiation leaking from the ship," the Doctor said, "this whole planet's in trouble. The Angel will grow too powerful for anyone to stop it."

"Which is where we come in," River said, grinning. "And when I say 'we' I include you as well."

"River," the Doctor said, making sure to pronounce his words with as much gravity as he could in order to make known the seriousness of the situation, "this is extremely dangerous. I'm not about to lose you, or my companions, or the clerics. I'll do this on my own."

"You've never been good on your own," River dismissed him. To Amy she added, "That's why he always travels with people, you know."

"River!" the Doctor cried.

"It's true," River continued, "and no one is leaving you."

The Doctor shot her a look that would have reduced many a person to tears, but River seemed not to be affected in the slightest. She simply gestured for him to follow her outside.

Rory exited first, the Doctor and River behind him, only to be met with a concerned Father Octavian as the door shut. And locked.

"River," he said, glancing at the Doctor, "you promised me an army."

River allowed him a charming smile. "I promised you the _equivalent_ of an army. This is the Doctor."

Octavian looked the Doctor up and down and the Doctor, for his part, sprang into action. "Right," he said, clapping his hands together. "So we need a plan, and not your plan, River, because—no offense—but whatever it was it was daft. You have no idea what you're up against. Luckily, I've met the Weeping Angels before and what we need to do is corner it. Trick it, if we can, which is easy, because there's one of it and several of us. And we can look at it, and it will turn to stone. So what we need are plenty of lights and our wits about us, and we'll go into that Temple and get into the ship. I'll stop the radiation leak, which will take away some of the power source and, as a result, some of the danger."

"Doctor," Rory attempted to cut in.

"Not now, Rory. Anyway, once that power supply is drained the Angels should look for a new target: me, since I've got the most powerful source the Angels have ever seen: The TARDIS. After that I'll do something...brilliant using my wonderful time machine-"

"Doctor," Rory repeated, more insistent.

"Hold on!" The Doctor continued, "And after that the threat should be removed, and then we leave. Unless...River, have you seen a crack of sorts around here?"

"No," River replied.

"Doctor!" Rory cried.

The Doctor finally turned to face him. "What?"

"Where's Amy?"

The words settled like a weight on the Doctor's chest when he realized that Amy had been unusually quiet and the reason was that Amy was not there.

A moment of silence. Then-

"The cabin!"

The Doctor, Rory, and River sprang towards the cabin, the Doctor's sonic screwdriver already out, and the moment he reached the door he tugged on the handle and was unsurprised, though still rather frustrated, that it wouldn't open.

On the other side they could hear Amy shouting "Doctor!" but it was muffled.

"Amy!" Rory called.

"It's locked me in here!" came Amy's frantic voice from the other side. "And it's moving!"

"Don't blink," the Doctor commanded as he attempted to unlock the door with the sonic screwdriver, without much success. "Don't blink and don't turn away!"

"It's kind of hard!" Amy shouted.

"Doctor, you have to save her," Rory said, his voice insistent. "You can't just let that...thing get to her!"

"I'm trying," the Doctor managed between gritted teeth. "Amy, whatever you do don't look it in the eyes. And River—can't you turn the camera off!"

"What?" Amy yelled at the same time as River told him, "I can't!"

"Try!" The Doctor ran the sonic up and down the length of the door and tugged again at the handle, but without success. He let out a cry of frustration.

"How come it's not working?" River asked, struggling with her own task of turning off the security camera.

"It's coming out of the camera!" Amy cried.

The Doctor redoubled his efforts and, simultaneously shouted, "See, River? This is why it's dangerous! This is why I should do it on my own, because you all could-" He bit off the word and pulled on the door again.

"Doctor," came Amy's voice again, but strangely quiet. Almost resigned.

"We could _what_?" Rory asked, in a voice that told everyone he knew the answer and was scared to death of it.

"This can't happen!" the Doctor yelled, banging the door.

To everyone's shock, the door burst open and they all ran in, only to find Amy standing there rubbing her eyes, and a black screen in front of them.

The Doctor turned to Amy. "What happened?"

"I-I managed to blink with one eye at a time," Amy explained, sounding a bit shaken but extremely relieved. "And then it started to appear and I sort of...fiddled with the remote thingy," she held the device up, "and I got the camera to turn off." She rubbed at her eye again.

River looked concerned. "Are you sure you're alright."

"Fine," Amy insisted. "And I did pretty well for myself, too. Right, Doctor?"

"Considering you're not dead, I'd say so," the Doctor said, with a tight grin that didn't quite take away the tension from his features.

"Well I, for one, am glad you're okay," Rory said, giving Amy a quick hug and kiss on the lips. "Maybe we should go back to the TARDIS like the Doctor said?"

"It isn't a maybe," the Doctor started but River cut across him.

"You two are coming with us." River turned towards the Doctor. "That Angel isn't being monitored anymore, which means it can move. You said it would want the TARDIS, so what would be the use of putting Amy and Rory there?"

"They'd never get in," the Doctor said.

"I still think they're safer with us," River said. "Besides, you never let other people choose. Let Amy and Rory choose what they want, for once."

Rory looked distinctly uncomfortable. Amy seemed delighted. "We're coming with you, of course!" she said.

Rory sighed, looking as though this was the last thing he wanted. Still, he mumbled, "I'll go wherever Amy goes."

"Great." River smiled at the Doctor, a smile that faded when she looked into his eyes and saw something she couldn't—or perhaps didn't want to name. Deep sadness, or helplessness. It almost looked like...despair.

For a moment there was awkward silence, and suddenly the Doctor snapped out of his trance. "Right! So, everyone's coming? Brilliant!" No one missed the sarcasm in his tone. Still, he went on, voice only slightly laced with anger, "To the temple!"

They could only follow him out.


	7. Maze of the Dead

The first thing the Doctor did as they entered the Temple's 'Maze of the Dead', as River lovingly called it, was throw a gravity globe into the air to give them light. The globe illuminated most of the area, revealing hundreds upon hundreds of stone statues and many exits from the main area, all littered with more statues.

"So we're looking for a stone Angel amongst hundreds of stone statues," the Doctor said, the anger not entirely gone from his voice, and it was enough to make even River feel a bit awkward. "I ordinarily wouldn't say split up but, well, we're in a huge temple and there's no way we'd find that thing staying all together and wasting time. Not unless you want to be here for days, but then everything would be destroyed anyway. So! River, Amy, Rory, and Octavian, with me. Other clerics, split off into two separate groups. And don't wander off alone. That's asking for trouble. Got it?"

The group nodded, the clerics armed themselves with flashlights and guns (the Doctor disapprovingly looked on but said nothing) and they went their separate ways.

The maze was vast and dark and amazing in a way that put a chill up even the Doctor's spine, if only because there was such a danger lurking in the darkness. Any of the statues could be an Angel. The Doctor felt a vague wrongness about everything, completely different from the whole time itself being wrong, or himself being wrong. It made him nervous.

From behind he heard Rory say, "Did that statue just...move?"

"Don't be daft," Amy said. "Statues don't move."

"Unless they're Weeping Angels," Rory reminded her.

"But they don't look like Angels," Amy pointed out, "so they're not."

"You know," the Doctor interrupted, "if you're not quiet we can't hear if anything is moving or not."

Silence fell.

After a few minutes of nothingness River spoke up. "You're quite tense."

The reply came with a surprising harshness. "I can't be blamed if I don't want everyone to _die_, now can I?"

"_Well._"

The Doctor took a calming breath. "Sorry," he murmured. "Just...I don't want anyone hurt."

They continued walking.

Some time later the Doctor felt so wrong that he made everyone stop.

They could hear running footsteps. Octavian and River shined their flashlights on the area where the footfalls came from and one of the clerics came into view. "Father!" he panted, "They're here!"

"They?" Octavian repeated.

"It killed Bob!" the cleric said. "And the others have disappeared! I can't even reach them by radio."

"You found a body?" the Doctor asked, raising an eyebrow. That was new.

"Just the one," the cleric answered.

A strange feeling descended on the Doctor, so much so that he had to ask, "Is anyone looking at the statues?"

They turned around, shining flashlights.

The statues were closer. All of them.

The Doctor hit himself on the head. "How could I have been so _stupid_! It's been here all along!"

"What?" River asked, as the flashlights flickered of their own accord.

"This civilization was known for, among their achievements, being one of the few species in the world to be two headed. So," the Doctor concluded, "Why do all the statues have one head?"

Silence, as everyone realized he was right.

"They didn't know how to do statues with two heads?" Rory offered.

The Doctor gave him a sympathetic smile. "No," he said. "The statues are being converted to Weeping Angels."

"All of them?" River asked. "That's impossible!"

"You saw them—they moved when you weren't looking!" The Doctor glanced around. "That one Angel's been busy in the time we haven't been watching it. It's been feeding off the radiation leaking from the Byzantium and using it to create an army. And," the Doctor added, emphasizing each syllable, "we're right in the middle of it."

The temperature seemed to drop by a few degrees. To everyone's horror, the flashlights flickered for long enough for everything to become dark. When the light came back, the statues were closer. And in different positions.

"Run!" the Doctor yelled.

They ran, shining lights everywhere and attempting to avoid the Angels, trying to find a way to the ship. And then-

"I'm stuck!"

"Oh, Amy," the Doctor groaned, as he came to a dead stop to find Amy's hand gripping a part of the wall like it was made of stone.

"Doctor," Rory called. He had also stopped. "What's happening?"

With her other hand Amy moved up to rub her eye.

"I don't know," the Doctor admitted. "Amy, move your hand."

"I can't!" Amy snapped. "It's stone."

"Doctor!" River called from behind.

"Keep going!" the Doctor yelled back. "I'll be right there!" He turned his attention back to Amy and her hand. "It's not stone."

"Yes it is, Doctor. I can feel it."

The Doctor noticed two things. The first was that her hand looked like flesh to him, though it was rigged as if it were stone. The second was the way Amy rubbed her eye. "What's wrong with your eye?" he asked.

With a jerk, like surprise at being caught, Amy pulled her other hand away. "Nothing! My hand's stone! Shouldn't you be counting on that?"

"Shouldn't I what?" the Doctor asked, running his sonic screwdriver over her hand.

"Shouldn't you be concentrating on my hand?" Amy clarified.

"The sonic shows nothing wrong," the Doctor said. He leaned forward, looking into her eyes. "I don't know why, but they're playing with your mind."

"Doctor," Rory called, his tone worried. "The Angels...they're getting closer."

Indeed, the lights had been flickering for some time.

"Thanks for telling me something I don't know," the Doctor called back. Then, to Amy, "I'm going to do something that's a bit strange, but then again, I'm the Doctor. You'll just have get over it and move on." He bent over.

"What-" Amy started, but she bit off the words at the same time the Doctor bit her hand, causing her to cry in pain and draw it up towards her face.

"See!" the Doctor said, flashing her a smile. "Not stone!"

"You bit her hand!" Rory cried.

"Yes, I did," the Doctor rounded on him, "but unless you want your girlfriend—sorry, _fiancee—_killed by statues I'd say you'd better get over it."

Rory opened and closed his mouth like a fish but had no time to respond as the Doctor pulled him and Amy forward.

They ran into an area of clear space occupied only by River and the clerics. It seemed to be a dead end. No one moved, and the lights flickered.

"A dead end," River said. "And, Doctor, look up."

He did. Above them was the Byzantium. An entrance, but one that, in their current position, was impossible to get to. The only helpful thing, perhaps, was the gravity globe that had followed them and floated by the entrance of the ship, but even that faded with the Angels' influence.

Before the Doctor could even begin to talk his way out of this, Father Octavian's radio cackled to life, and a voice called out, "Doctor?"

Octavian looked surprised and a bit sickened. He picked up the radio and spoke into it. "Bob?"

"Bob's dead," said the voice which belonged to Bob.

The Doctor gestured for the radio, and Octavian handed it over. "So I gather you're an Angel, right?"

"Yes."

"And you're using Bob's voice to communicate with us? I'm not going to even begin to get into how angry it makes me that you killed a man just to mock his death by using his voice to get to us, and if you think that's going to affect us then you're wrong. I should warn you, though, I liked Bob and you killed him, and when you kill people I like you end up on my wrong side, which isn't a good place to stand. Why are you talking to me, anyway?"

"The Angels wanted you to know," Bob's voice said, "that they felt Bob's consciousness when he died. They wanted you to know that he trusted you, and you let him down, and he died alone and afraid. The Angels were keen that you know that."

The Doctor laughed a strange sort of laugh with no humor in it, making several of the group shiver. "You know what? I may have let him down, but I'm not going to be doing that again. I know what you are and I've defeated you before, so don't think for a second I can't do it again. I'm the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords. I've saved planets and universes and done things you couldn't even fathom, and if you think I'm going to be defeated by a Weeping Angel trying to psych me out using a man I let die then you're wrong."

River looked worried by all this, and when Amy asked why River whispered to her that the death did indeed affect the Doctor. But he was pushing back the grief for later, letting anger instead propel him forward. For some reason, that worried her.

"But," the voice of Bob insisted, "we are an army and you are few. We have you trapped."

"Yes," the Doctor agreed with a slightly knowing laugh. "Yes, you do." He took a deep breath, and then abruptly started pacing, his voice taking on a lighter, energized tone. "But do you know what? I've been all around the galaxy and I've made plenty of mistakes and I've learned from all of them, believe me. But the difference between me and everyone else is that everyone else doesn't seem to learn from their mistakes, because they make the same stupid mistake over and over again when it comes to me. The same one you're making right now."

"What mistake?"

The Doctor gestured towards Octavian. Towards his gun. Octavian handed it over and the Doctor continued talking, even as the statues in the shadows came closer with each flash of darkness. "Wellll, to be fair, you've made a few mistakes, one of which is assuming that everyone doesn't trust me. You lot trust me, right? River?"

"With my life," River replied.

"Amy?" A nod. "Rory?" Another nod. "Father?" Nod. "Clerics?" Two nods.

"_And_," the Doctor continued, "you're biggest mistake. You've put me in a trap, and if you know anything at all about me, and who I am, and what I do, you'd know that the one thing you never do is that you never ever put me in a trap." A pause, to let it sink in. "Because very often," the Doctor relished his words, complete with a smile, "the trap ceases to work when I'm in it."

The Doctor turned towards the others and said, "When I say jump, you jump, got it?"

Everyone nodded.

The Doctor pointed his gun at the ceiling and grinned a manic grin. "So, what do you say, Angel Bob? Let's spring this trap!"

He shot the gun.


	8. The Byzantium

"JUMP!"

The gravity globe exploded, they jumped, and landed.

The Doctor glanced around to make sure everyone had made it. As it turned out, everyone had.

"What," Rory gasped, "just happened?"

"A lovely little trick of gravity," the Doctor said, tossing the gun back to Octavian, who caught it. "Shooting the gravity globe disrupted the gravity field of the area, allowing us to jump and be locked on to the gravity field created by the ship. We are standing on the surface of the Byzantium." He tapped his foot, and it sounded metallic.

As if to confirm, everyone looked around. Sure enough, there was the stone floor above them and the metal surface of the ship below them.

"We're upside down?" Amy asked, eyes wide.

"Nope," the Doctor grinned. "Gravity of the ship's made it so that you're right side up. Once we step inside there should be another gravity change, but you won't feel that. It'll just look strange from the outside." He brandished the sonic screwdriver. "Now-"

The lights flickered for a moment. Before anyone could say "Doctor" he had already guessed what the problem was.

Now the Angels, looking a lot more like Angels and less like random statues, surrounded them.

"Right," the Doctor sighed. "Too much talking. Inside."

He sonicked the circular entrance and beckoned everyone to jump inside. Giving one last look to the Angels he entered the ship...

The lights flickered, and once in the ship he found themselves staring at another locked door.

"Well, this is lovely," he muttered, running over to the door's controls and attempting to figure out how to open it. He realized that, despite what he'd said, the Angels had been smart in laying their trap. He would never admit it, but he had to admire it. "It's almost brilliant," he muttered.

"Ten?" Amy asked.

"What?" River asked.

"What?" Amy said, with the tone of someone impatient at not being heard the first time.

"Nothing." The Doctor waved her away. "It's just that in order to get the door open and for us to get through, I have to turn the lights off." A heavy silence. "Just for a few seconds, but a few seconds is enough. Blink and you're dead, and all that."

"So what do we do?" Rory asked, looking anxious.

The Doctor shrugged. "What we have to. We open the door."

"And let the Angels get to us?"

"Unless you have a better idea, and I doubt it..."

River put her arm on the Doctor's, a gesture that seemed to mildly discomfort him. Still, she said, "But that means you'll have to hold the door, right?"

"Right." The Doctor fiddled with the sonic screwdriver's settings. "I've done more dangerous before, River, don't worry. I'll be able to pull it off. I'll have enough time once you lot are through to get myself out."

"But-"

"It'll be fine." End of discussion. "Alright! So, the minute the lights turn out, which will be pretty obvious given it will suddenly get dark, you need to run into the other room. Don't waste time cos we haven't got it."

The Doctor raised the sonic screwdriver towards the door controls and the lights went out.

Between random flashes of light everyone could see the Angels entering the ship, but luckily enough, they all made it through to the next room. The door shut behind the Doctor.

"Nine," Amy sighed.

Rory gave her a strange look but said nothing.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was delighted that they had found themselves at what looked like a control center of the ship. "Secondary control room!" he exclaimed. "Brilliant! Although it probably means we have to get to the primary control room to shut off the radiation, if things are really going to be as difficult as they seem." He checked a few of the controls, flipped a few switches, and seemed to deflate. "Yeah, I kind of figured it'd be the hard way."

"So where is the primary control room?" Father Octavian asked.

"Eight," Amy said.

Rory asked, "Amy?" but she shook him away.

"It's opposite the direction we came," said the Doctor. "I hope there are no Angels but something tells me there will be. This isn't over."

"So how to we get there?" River asked.

The Doctor walked over to the far wall and tapped it. "Aha!" he exclaimed. "Just as I thought! This opens." He leaped back to the controls and pressed a few buttons.

The wall in front of them parted, revealing...a forest.

"Seven," Amy said.

Rory seemed to grow more anxious. "Doctor?"

"What is that?" River gasped.

The forest seemed incredibly real, with trees and dirt and what looked like a night sky where the ceiling disappeared from view. It was also dark and shaded in areas and seemed the perfect place for hiding.

"It's an oxygen factory," the Doctor grinned. "Rather brilliant, actually. The technology," he pulled the bark of one tree back, revealing what looked like glowing wires, "is incorporated into the plants. They take in carbon dioxide waste and breathe out oxygen. It's a perfect system!"

"Six!" Amy said.

"Doctor," Rory insisted. "Did you not just hear that?"

"Hear what?" Amy asked, frowning.

"You," the Doctor turned his attention from the trees and walked up to Amy, examining her. He scanned her body with the sonic screwdriver and frowned. "You've been counting for quite awhile now, down from ten, and I want to know why."

"What are you talking about?" Amy laughed nervously. "I'm five." Her eyes widened. "Five!" Then, in frustration, "_Fine_!"

"There's something strange coming up in my scans," the Doctor told her. "I need...I need...Father Octavian, I need your radio."

Octavian handed it over and the Doctor immediately demanded of it, "What have you done to Amy?"

The voice of Bob answered him, "The Angels have implanted one of their own inside her."

"What for?" the Doctor asked. "Why not just kill her? Or convert her? Why all this counting down?"

"To scare her," Angel Bob said. "She will die. And the Angel will consume her."

"No," Rory whispered, taking hold of Amy's arm, as Amy stared ahead in shock. "Doctor, you can't let that happen!"

"I'll try not to," the Doctor said. Then, to the Angel, "I hope you're prepared, because now you've made me angry. And you're not going to like when I'm angry. If you take nothing else away from what I've told you then remember this: No one else will die. No one!"

"Then we better go" River told him, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him towards the forest.

"Right," the Doctor said.

They walked into the forest, a feeling of foreboding surrounding them, in the very air. Silence took over. They found themselves entering a clearing. Then-

"Amy?" Rory's anxious voice broke through, and then suddenly became panicked. "Amy!"

The Doctor and River, at the front of the group, turned to find Amy holding her head in her hands, kneeling on the floor, and Rory beside her, checking her pulse.

The Doctor and River rushed over, River taking out a medical device and attaching it to Amy's arm, while the Doctor scanned her again with her sonic screwdriver.

"Is she okay?" Rory asked. "Her pulse feels erratic."

"Her blood pressure's down," River informed them, reading from a monitor displaying Amy's vitals. "If she lays down she'll be fine."

"Standing or lying down, she'll be dead in minutes," the Doctor murmured.

Rory gasped as if he'd been stabbed, and River rounded on the Doctor in shock. "Why would you say that?"

"Because it's true!" the Doctor snapped. "Much as we all don't want to believe Amy could be dying she _is_ and denying it won't help solve the problem!"

"Can you help her?" Rory asked, his eyes pleading with the Doctor to save the woman he loved.

"I'm not sure," the Doctor admitted, running hands through his hair in frustration.

"We don't have much time," River insisted.

"You think I don't know that?" the Doctor snapped. Then, "Sorry. Just—I'm not losing her, I'm _not_. I just have to think. The Angels said that they were inside Amy, and she's dying because the Angel is taking over-"

"Four," Amy whispered. "Doctor, I'm scared."

"I know." The Doctor sighed. "The Angel is taking over and it got into you because...you looked directly at it. Yes! And now it's in your eyes, it's _in_ there. Last time you defeated it you shut the camera off. So what...if we just close your eyes? That's it! Amy, I need you to close your eyes."

"I can't," Amy whispered.

"You can. Just do it."

Amy cringed and with what seemed to be a large effort, closed her eyes.

To everyone's relief, the vital signs on River's device began to improve.

The Doctor stood up and frowned. "That's all very well and good, but we have to get to the primary control center before the Angels get too strong and the gravity of the ship breaks."

River and Rory helped Amy sit up, and Amy stated, "You have to leave me behind."

"No," Rory said.

"She's right," the Doctor admitted. "She'll slow us down far too much and we don't have enough time." At Rory's glare he added, "But we can't leave her alone."

"I'll stay," Rory volunteered.

"And defend her with what?" the Doctor asked. "Your hands? The moment you touch those Angels you die. They're faster and smarter than you. Father Octavian and his clerics stand a better chance."

"I can't leave her," Rory insisted. "I love her."

"You can trust Octavian," the Doctor said. "He and his men are armed and they can defend Amy better than you can." He called over to the Father.

"But-" Rory tried, but Amy placed her hand on his.

"It'll be alright, Rory," Amy said. "I trust the Doctor and I trust the clerics."

"You keep saying that," Rory said bitterly, "and so far things haven't been alright."

"You just have to trust him."

The Doctor, meanwhile, explained to Octavian what he and his men had to do, and why, ending with, "If Amy doesn't get out of this alive, you and your men will have hell to pay from me. Are we understood?"

"Clearly," Octavian said. "But River Song must remain with me."

"Why?" the Doctor asked, clearly confused.

"He's my fiancee," River said.

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "_Really_?"

"She's my prisoner," Octavian corrected, shooting River a stern look. "She's my responsibility."

"Well, let's swap, then," the Doctor suggested. "You take Amy, who's my responsibility, and I take River, who's yours. At the end of the day we swap back. Deal?"

Octavian frowned. "You have no idea what River's done."

"I just have to trust that she won't do it to me," the Doctor said.

Octavian nodded. "I trust you," he said. "And you can trust me with Miss Pond."

"Fantastic." The Doctor then knelt down in front of Amy. "Amy, no matter what happened, you must not open your eyes under any circumstances. If you do, the Angel will take over and you will die. I'm putting you in the capable hands of Father Octavian and his clerics." He gripped her shoulder, for one moment. "I'll see you later."

"But Doctor," Amy said, facing rather blindly in the direction of his voice.

"It'll be fine," the Doctor reassured her. "Trust me." He turned to Rory, who hesitated. "Come on."

Rory bent down and planted a soft kiss on Amy's lips. "I love you," he whispered, "and I'm going to see you again."

Amy smiled. The Doctor watched this exchange with a sort of sadness and he felt now, more than ever, the need to make sure everything turned out fine.

"Let's go," he told Rory, giving the young man a sympathetic look before they disappeared into the darkness.

Leaving Amy with the clerics in the clearing.

"Doctor?" she called out, but no one answered.


	9. Amy Alone

Amy tensed where she sat, the lingering kiss still on her lips from Rory, and the lingering touch still present on her shoulder from the Doctor. She called out again, expecting no answer—the Doctor had been pretty keen on leaving—but was shocked when two hands gripped her shoulders.

"Amy," a voice breathed, laced with sadness and regret. "Oh, Amy, it is so important that you trust me."

Amy tried to sense who it was, but she couldn't see. She only managed to whisper, "Doctor?"

"Yes," the voice answered, even though it wasn't the Doctor's voice, not as she heard it last. "Amy," she felt a rough fabric, like tweed, brush against her face, along with a hand, "do you remember what I told you when you were seven?"

Amy frowned. "No, I-"

A sound of frustration from the voice. "That's the thing," he murmured, placing his head against hers. "You have to remember. And you have to trust me." Then all feelings of being touched left her.

"Who are you?" Amy called out.

There was no answer, and she wondered if the clerics had even noticed anyone there.

The silence became unbearable, if only because Amy could hear every single crunch of soil underneath someone's feet, every rustle of leaves, even, she thought, every breath, and her heartbeat thumped loudly in her ears as her panic became evident. She would die. If the Doctor couldn't fix this, she would die, and she had wanted to go with him, yes, but not quite like this. She liked the danger and the rush and the possibility of dying, but she never took into account actually dying and now, faced with reality, she wanted the nightmare to be over.

She wanted to wake up in her room, a little girl again still convinced the Doctor would come and take her away to the stars.

A new sound made itself present. The clerics, talking. And Father Octavian telling them, "Ignore it, it's nothing."

"What is it?" Amy called, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

"It's a light," Octavian called back. "Don't worry."

How could she not worry, unable to see?

"Let me look," she said.

"It's a bit strange," one of the clerics noted from afar. "Are you sure we shouldn't take a look?"

Octavian sighed. "Fine. Take a look. But keep your radio on and come back straightaway."

"I have to see it," Amy insisted, a terrible feeling growing. She thought she knew what it was. What it always was, ever since she met the Doctor.

"Miss Pond," Octavian's grave voice suddenly was very close, right beside her, "I can't let you do that. The Doctor ordered you to keep your eyes shut."

"I was on 'four' with the countdown," Amy reminded him. "I've got a few seconds. I promise, just a few seconds-"

"You don't have a few seconds!"

"Then _one_ second, I just have to see!"

Something about the urgency of her voice and the barely hidden panic must have affected Octavian, because he sighed and gripped Amy's shoulder, helping her up. "I'll face you in the direction of the light," he told her, "and I'll tell you when to open your eyes. But you must close them shortly after."

"Fine." Amy felt herself being turned.

"Open," Octavian said.

Amy opened.

Bright white light filled her vision, but beyond that she saw the familiar crack. The crack from her bedroom, the crack from the British space station, the crack from 1851...

"It's following me," Amy whispered, unable to look away. "That crack, it can't be following..." Her knees gave out as weakness took over, and Octavian roughly shoved his hand in front of her eyes.

"Are they closed?" he asked.

Finally, Amy managed to close them. "Yes," she breathed. "But, the crack. That crack—where's that man?" Her voice rose. "The cleric you sent, where is he?"

"Speaking of which," Octavian muttered. And then he called out to the second cleric, telling him to go take a look at the crack as well.

"Wait!" Amy cried. "Didn't you just send someone? Don't we need two people?"

"Miss Pond, I am perfectly capable of protecting you on my own," Octavian said. "And I never sent anyone to investigate."

"You just sent two men!" Amy began to feel a bit sick with uncertainty. She couldn't see, and the crack was there, and the Angels were lurking and two men had gone missing and Octavian wasn't remembering the details.

"I haven't sent anyone," Octavian repeated. "I do think I should take a look at that crack."

"No!" Amy grabbed around until she managed to catch his arm. He pulled away and she felt something hard and cold shoved into her hand.

"Take the radio," Octavian told her, "and use it to communicate with me if you get scared. I promise I won't be long."

"But...but...those men!"

"There were no men, Miss Pond."

Amy tried not to panic, she really did. "But you need to stay with me!"

"This could be a great risk, and I must investigate for everyone's safety," Octavian said. "Surely, Miss Pond, you understand."

"I do, that's the problem," Amy groaned. "_You_ don't understand!"

"Just use the radio, Miss Pond. And don't open your eyes."

She knew he was gone by the sudden silence that followed.

There was only one thing for it. She had to call the Doctor.

* * *

The primary control room was in sight when everything seemed to get a bit lighter.

The Doctor, River, and Rory turned and saw a bright light. Squinting, the Doctor could make out-

"The crack."

"The one that's been following us around?" Rory asked.

The Doctor looked grim. "Exactly." He turned around and continued walking. "Come on."

"What are you doing?" Rory asked, looking thoroughly annoyed. "Shouldn't we be doing something?"

"Yes, I'm doing it," the Doctor told him. "That control room can deprive the Angels of their energy source—the ship—and at the same time we can use the technology to date the crack. Because that crack was caused by an explosion, and that explosion had to happen at some point in time. It'll be better for all of us when we figure out when."

They entered the control room, which looked very much like the first only slightly bigger. The Doctor and River began fiddling around with the computer devices—the Doctor to find a way to shut off the ship's radiation leak without killing them all in addition to dating the crack, and River attempting to fix a teleportation device.

Rory felt useless.

"Why am I here?"

"For moral support," the Doctor said.

After a few awkward moments of silence River turned to the Doctor and said, "Can I ask you something?"

Not really paying attention to her, absorbed in his task, the Doctor answered, "So long as you keep working on that teleportation device. Why are you working on that, anyway?"

"To see if I can teleport Amy here," River answered, and Rory's face lit up just a bit. "But that's not the point. Doctor..." River hesitated. "Normally I don't question your appearances, you being a time traveler, and given the nature of our relationship...but last time I saw you and Amy together, you looked different and I can't help but wonder, why do you look different now? I've never seen you look like this, yet you know me. I know you do. But I've never met this you before. Have you regenerated?"

The Doctor fixed her with a serious look. The last time he'd seen her she'd...well, she'd died. And he knew that, he knew the end of her life. And this meant, above all things, that this version of him couldn't be with this version of her now, not when that other version of him had been with Amy sometime in her past and what he knew to be his future.

He couldn't admit to her that time was wrong, and _he_ was wrong.

The Doctor gave her the one answer she'd always given him. "Spoilers."

River turned away.

And then, the radio next to the Doctor crackled to life.

Amy's voice filled the room. "Doctor? Doctor, are you there?"

"She sounds scared." Rory's eyes widened. "Is she alright?"

"Well, considering she's talking, I'd say she is," the Doctor said. He took the radio and spoke into it. "Amy, what happened?"

"Father Octavian and the clerics, they disappeared," Amy told him. "They went off to this bright light, which is really the crack from my room and now I'm alone in the forest."

The Doctor gritted his teeth. "Amy, calm down," he said.

"We have to get her back here," Rory said. "I'll go."

"Hold on." The Doctor turned to River. "Have you got that teleport working?"

"Still working on it," River responded, redoubling her efforts.

"Right. Then, Amy, listen to me." The Doctor took a deep breath, not liking what he would say next. "I need you to walk through the forest, to the primary control center."

"What?" Amy cried.

"Listen, it'll work out. I need you to walk through the forest, following my direction, and make it look like you can see because otherwise you'll become a target. You need to do this. Now, I'm going to use my sonic screwdriver to help you. I'm tweaking the radio a bit-" He sonicked his own radio and then stopped. "Now, you should hear a constant whirring, am I right?"

"Yes."

"When that whirring sound matches the sound my sonic screwdriver normally makes, you're facing the right direction. Follow the sound, walk in that direction. Got it?"

A moment of hesitation, then a shaky, "Got it."

"Good." The Doctor turned to Rory. "Don't worry. We'll have Amy back."

Rory did not look any less worried.

Then there was a strange sound over the radio. Almost like Amy had bitten off a scream.

"Amy?" The Doctor grabbed the radio. "Amy, are you there?"

"Doctor..." Amy's voice came through, scared to death.

"She's there," River said, showing the Doctor a reading of all life forms on the ship. "But so are the Angels."

* * *

Amy followed the sound of the sonic screwdriver in the dark, alone, doing the impossible by looking like she could see when she couldn't. Nearly tripping over roots and rocks, but doing fine.

Some sort of wind brushed every side of her, and there was a whooshing sound.

Amy knew what that meant. "Doctor..."

The Doctor's voice came through, urgent and perhaps a little bit scared. "Amy? Amy, are you there?"

Amy prepared to respond that yes, she was there, when something cold and hard gripped her shoulder.

There was another whooshing sound, this time roaring in her head, and the feeling of falling extremely far, and Amy squeezed her eyes shut for fear of releasing that Angel that was inside her.

Her back slammed against something and normal sounds returned. Except they weren't normal at all. The radio was missing from her hands, and Amy fancied she could hear cars not too far away. A busy street.

And then her hands brushed against the wall she leaned upon and she felt brick.

"Doctor!" Amy screamed, while the part of her mind, the realistic part she never wanted to acknowledge, screamed that she was as far from the Doctor as she could get and he wouldn't be able to help her now.


	10. The End of Time

There was a strange sound over the radio, like it had been dropped from Amy's end, and then River gasped.

Rory, who had been on edge ever since they left Amy, immediately leapt up. "What?" he demanded of River. "What is it?"

"She's gone," River whispered. "Amy's gone. She's disappeared from the monitor."

The Doctor straightened from his work, stunned. Rory staggered back, shaking his head, shaking, perhaps, his whole body. "No," he groaned. "No, no, no, no, it's not true, it can't be true." He rounded on the Doctor, pointing at him. "You said you'd save her! You _promised_!"

The Doctor felt the wrongness in time twist and turn and before he could control the emotion that went with the news of Amy's disappearance, he cried, "But this isn't right! You're the one who should be gone!"

River and Rory both stared, open-mouthed at the Doctor, who was just as shocked as them by the statement. He hadn't even felt that way until he'd said it.

"What!" Rory was shaking now, really shaking. Close to tears.

"I don't," the Doctor stammered, just as shaken himself, "I don't...I can't...you're..." Wrong. Rory was wrong, and Amy was right.

"It doesn't matter." Rory's words began to come out as sobs, and the Doctor began to feel that sinking feeling he got when he couldn't do anything at all. "You promised her and me and you lied about all of it because she's gone. She's _gone_. And tomorrow was our wedding. I _loved_ her."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor whispered.

Before Rory could respond, if he even had the ability, something beeped.

The Doctor turned towards the computer he'd been working on.

"What is that?" River asked.

The Doctor stared at the numbers on the screen and felt a certain hollowness settle in. He'd promised to get Rory and Amy home safe, both of them, and Amy was gone and these numbers didn't seem to matter anymore.

"The date of the explosion that caused the crack," the Doctor answered.

"And?" River's voice was slightly impatient.

"And it doesn't matter, does it?" the Doctor asked. "Amy's dead, the clerics are dead, Rory's right. I broke my promise."

"Yes, and there's still three people alive and a whole planet in danger both from the crack and the Angels," River reminded him. "We need those numbers and you need to stop the Angels from feeding on the power of the ship. And then you need to get Rory home. Remember?"

The Doctor sighed. She was right. He hated it and he couldn't admit it but she was right, always right.

With a sigh, he read the numbers. "It says 2-6-0-6-2-0-1-0. Happy?"

"That's the date of the explosion?" River confirmed. The Doctor nodded.

"No," Rory rasped. The Doctor and River looked over at him in surprise. His face was covered in tears, some of them still tracing their way down his face. He looked devastated anew, if such a thing were possible. "That's the date of our wedding. Twenty-six June, two-thousand-ten. That date..."

"But that's when the explosion occurs," the Doctor murmured. Then he gasped, bringing himself out of his misery-induced inactivity. "That's it! The crack followed us around, originating in Amy's room, because it's her time. _Amy's_ time! The day of her wedding there's a huge explosion and the cracks echo all across time, and somehow we're at the center of it."

Rory glared at him through his tears. "But she's dead."

The Doctor glanced out of the control room, in the direction of the crack. "Time can be rewritten," he murmured.

"Doctor?" River questioned carefully.

The Doctor turned, but as soon as he'd done so River cried "Doctor!"

The Doctor turned again. The entrance was surrounded by Angels.

"Doctor?" The voice of Bob, coming from the Angels, spoke up. "It seems we have won. You have lost four people and let the rest of your companions down. We are growing more powerful as we feed on the ship, but there is a crack."

"Yeah, I know, I've seen it." The Doctor glared at the Angels. "What do you lot want?"

"The crack," the voice of Bob explained, "it needs to be sealed. It can only be sealed by a complicated space-time event"

"And you want me to throw myself into the crack to seal it?"

"Yes."

"Well..."

"Doctor!" River cried. "You can't! Let me do it."

"Oh, no you don't!" The Doctor turned towards her. "You've still got a long time to live." He turned towards the Angels, frowning. "But my time's been up for awhile, I think."

"What are you talking about?" River asked.

The Doctor sighed. "I didn't tell you this, River, but I think, no, I _know_ the reason you've never seen me like this before is because you were never supposed to. I was supposed to die and regenerate, but for some reason I didn't. I met Amy Pond instead and I made the mistake of taking her and her fiancee with me when I wasn't even supposed to exist and getting them involved in this whole wrong time stream."

He turned towards Rory. "And I'm sorry, I really am."

Rory stared back at him, just a tiny bit of hope in his eyes. "Can you get her back?"

"I don't know." The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, then turned towards the Angels. "But what I do know is that I'm a complicated space-time event. _Really_ complicated now that I'm in the wrong time-frame. And if we all go, you Angels and I, then the crack will seal. But that extra bit of complexity, that wrongness, should, I hope, cause a rewrite in time. After all, time has been known to fix itself. It can't always stay wrong."

"You are not throwing yourself into that crack," River insisted.

"I am," the Doctor said, giving her a sad smile. "But...you can rest assured that if I'm going, then so are they."

"How will you achieve that?" the Angel with the voice of Bob asked.

"River, Rory, hold on to something," the Doctor told them. Then he turned to the Angels with a smirk on his face. "Like this."

Just as Rory and River grabbed onto the closest fixtures available to them, the gravity of the ship switched off as a result of the energy of the ship having been sucked dry by the army of Weeping Angels.

They all fell towards the white light, the Doctor amidst a flock of Angels, falling and falling until they disappeared into nothingness.

* * *

Somewhere in a mansion an old man knocked four times, and an even older man died to rescue him. As the Doctor walked away to receive his reward, and to become a new man, the man who would meet Amy Pond properly and take her on as his companion, he did not know of any other reality other than where Wilfred Mott knocked four times, giving the Doctor his death sentence.

As the Doctor walked away to become a new man, he did not notice the thin remnant of a once-large crack, hiding on the wall inside the radiation chamber.


End file.
